LOCAL authorities should run some NHS services to give residents a proper voice in their health care, Alan Milburn said yesterday.

In a lecture at Durham University, the former health secretary urged prime minister-in-waiting Gordon Brown to give councils responsibility for commissioning care from hospitals.

The Darlington MP said it had been a mistake, back in 1948, to give the NHS a "democratic deficit" by allowing it to be run separately from local government.

He added: "It is the quality of the local school and hospital, the local GP surgery and childcare centre that people care most about. Their masters should be local communities, not Whitehall departments.

"The Government has fought shy of doing for health what we already do for education and leisure services - making the ballot box the way to hold the local NHS to account."

The move would "kill stone dead" the charge that Labour is afraid to devolve power to ordinary people and instead believes that "Whitehall knows best", Mr Milburn added.

The idea, outlined in a speech at St Chad's College, is the latest put forward by Mr Milburn to breathe new life into what he sees as a stagnating democracy.

Previously, he has suggested giving parents new powers to choose schools and allowing NHS patients to choose treatments.

Families with disabled children, and people in training, should control their own publicly-funded budgets, he has said.

Earlier this year, Mr Milburn launched a political website - 2020 Vision - as a forum to break Mr Brown's iron grip on policymaking in the Labour party, fearing a drift to the left.